


Parts You Have No Right To

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials Fusion, Daemon Touching, M/M, Mid-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-22 07:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17055542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: His Dark Materials AU. When Frank is incapacitated, David has to break with taboo and touch his daemon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/gifts).



> _"Too much rain_  
>  loosens trees.  
> In the hills giant oaks  
> fall upon their knees.  
> You can touch parts  
> you have no right to—  
> places only birds  
> should fly to." 
> 
> ― Kay Ryan

The unspoken law is that no one touches another person’s daemon. Not when it’s healthy. Not when it’s hurt. Not when you’re basically strangers, or enemies, or pathological partners.

No one touches another person’s daemon.

So when David, scraped up and black with leaves and mud, finally stumbles on the prone body of the Punisher, he lets Jackobi search for Ceilidh. Not him, not his hands; no, his hands are busy. Rolling Frank onto his back. Scrabbling at his neck for a pulse. The painted wolf pads past him and noses at a curled form on the forest floor.

“Is she alive?” David is out of breath and hot, steaming beneath his gloves and coat.

“She’s breathing.” Jackobi, a species bred to run for miles without ever tiring, is barely panting. He gently takes the ruff of fur at Ceilidh’s neck in his mouth and pulls. David tastes the bitter blood and russet fur like a memory as it passes onto Jackobi’s tongue.

After only a brief look, it's obvious Frank needs some serious medical intervention. “We need to carry them,” David says. He knows he can probably take Frank. Big as the guy is, David is still taller.

He looks at his daemon and they wordlessly struggle with the fact that Jackobi can’t carry a king cheetah in his mouth.

“You go on.” Jackobi extends his neck and tests how far he can open his mouth around Ceilidh’s furred throat. “I’ll follow with her.”

They both know how that will feel. The price that will exact on them both.

The muscles in Jackobi’s shoulders bunch as he hauls Ceilidh’s body a few feet forward in the mud.

Frank’s not awake, and if he doesn’t get fluids and treatment for this physical trauma he won’t ever wake up. David turns away from his daemon and throws Frank’s arm around his neck, heaving him up until his body is as balanced on his shoulders as it’s going to be. Christ, he’s heavy.

When David turns back towards his daemon, Jackobi bares his teeth and a low growl twists out of him.

David ignores him. He has to. As far as he knows, Frank hasn't stretched the boundaries between himself and his daemon, so they need them both to make sure they survive. When he reaches into the soft, thick spotted fur of the cheetah daemon, Jackobi whines and crouches low against the ground at the sacrilege of it.

Ceilidh weighs barely anything compared to Frank. Her long, lax body is difficult to hold but not bulky. Maybe that’s true, or maybe David just doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing. He presses her hard against his chest and begins the long slog back to the car.

Jackobi lets out a series of high-pitched trills as he follows, bounding around David and running on ahead to lead the way.

In the car, Jackobi stays in the back with the two unconscious figures to make sure no one starts to seize. David drives as fast as he can while trying his best to forget how it felt to hold the very soul of Frank Castle against his heart. How vulnerable it made all four of them for the thirty-something minutes it took to get them back to the road.

How relieved he is that Frank didn’t wake up.

He hauls Frank into the powerplant’s kitchen first, sweeping everything off the table so that he can lie the man flat on top of it. He returns to the van with a sheet from the cot bed, relieved to be able to allow Jackobi to tug Ceilidh onto it and then transfer her to the ground on it without having to touch her again.

Jackobi pulls her into the kitchen to join them and David starts to check Frank over to see just how bad the damage is.

The bullet wounds are pretty awful. The crossbow bolt in his shoulder is worse. He’s hot already, and shivering, sweating, like he lost too much blood or didn’t lose enough and now what’s left is burning up. David shakes his head and runs both hands through his hair, tugging it away from his scalp.

“I’m going to have to get Curtis. This is too bad, Jack.” He glances down at Ceilidh on his way out. “How’s she doing?”

Jackobi’s tongue and muzzle are red with her blood. He licks his nose. “Rough.” With his paw, he indicates three spots. “Those are the worst. Looks like wolf bites.”

David presses his lips together, then exhales. “Okay. All right. Let’s go. They’re as stable as they’re going to get right now.”

Jackobi lets out a whine of agreement and they get back into the car, squealing out of the powerplant and into the city.

David knows about as much as it is possible to know about Curtis Hoyle, Frank’s last remaining contact in the land of the living. He knows how long he served. Why he was discharged. How the blast that cost the man his leg took the sight of his jaguar daemon.

It doesn’t really prepare him to receive the welcome of a gun in his face and a huge defensive cat, but he doesn’t care. He can’t care. “Frank’s hurt,” he says, past the barrel of the gun. “He’s dying.”

The jaguar closes her mouth and pushes through the gap in the door. She sniffs Jackobi’s muzzle, then lets out a guttural note. “They’re telling the truth, Curtis."

Curtis stares at David like he’s mentally measuring his neck for a noose, then kicks the door aside to let him in. “Fuck. Give me a second.”

The jaguar turns aside and the light inside the apartment runs over her face, highlighting the scars that ripple across her skull. Jackobi stays close to her, sniffing them tentatively, as David follows Curtis further in.

Curtis disappears into his bedroom, then reappears minus crutches. He grabs a medical kit from a drawer and adds twenty more things to it as he questions David, shoving most of it into his arms.

They hurry back down to ground level and David drives the four of them back to the powerplant in record time.

He tries to stay out of the way while Curtis and his daemon examine their patients. It seems like the best thing to do: there’s not much space left after you fit two big cats and two big men in the kitchen.

It doesn’t go entirely to plan.  Since Curtis’ helper has paws and is already treating Frank’s daemon, he needs David to come back in and hold Frank still while he extracts the crossbow bolt. Trying very hard not to look at the wound or listen to the horrendous noise of metal pushing through meat, David instead finds himself staring at Curtis’ daemon.

You wouldn’t think a jaguar would suit a medic. Even one in a trauma-intensive war zone. Still, there’s something about the silence and stillness of the huge cat as it wraps itself around the smaller cheetah and rasps its tongue against her wounds. Something calming. Maybe that’s it.

“Why'd you have to go after him?”

David belatedly realises Curtis has finished and has moved away. He’s not even touching Frank anymore; he’s washing his hands. “Uh,” David says, then eases Frank gently back down onto the table. When he lifts his hand off he sees a bloody replica of it on the skin of Frank’s shoulder.

“He had to save him,” comes Jackobi’s voice, as he pads into the room. “Just as he had to save his family.”

Curtis turns in surprise. It’s not rare for daemons to speak to people other than their own, but it is uncommon enough that the whole room pays attention to the painted wolf.

Somewhat humbled, Curtis turns off the faucet and plucks a hand towel from the kitchen worktop. “Look. Frank might not look fragile, but he’s susceptible. It's easy to push his buttons if you know what they are.”

He glances at David, again with that penetrating look that strips his insides. “And I get the feeling you know exactly what they are.”

David tries not to think about Ceilidh’s hot fur and the double beat of her and Frank's hearts on his chest.

When the jaguar daemon gets to her feet, Jackobi steals in and takes her place next to the king cheetah. The jaguar pauses incrementally and huffs what could be irritation or could be laughter, before heading to Curtis’ side and waiting with her tail curled around her feet for him to instruct David on Frank’s care for the next few weeks.

It’s a lot of words. A lot of medical terminology. Jackobi curls tighter around Ceilidh’s body and rests his chin on her shoulder, watching the two of them take Frank to the cot. His ear flicks as David gives Curtis directions and tells him how far out he needs to walk to call a cab.

When David returns, Jackobi says nothing. He watches David draw a chair up beside Frank’s bed and sit on it, wiping the sweat from his forehead and pulling at the sideburns of his beard with his nails. He smells Frank’s sickness and Ceilidh’s exhaustion and David’s fear.

He digs his chin deeper into Ceilidh’s fur.


	2. Chapter 2

Skin heals. Bone breaks, grows, reforms.

When Frank returns to life, this time, he doesn't mention the trip back.

David is relieved beyond words. It’s one less thing to explain.

It’s bad enough that Jackobi now sits within a few feet of Ceilidh at all times, like he's protecting her from herself. At least now that she’s awake Jackobi lets her lick her own wounds, and as far as David knows they haven’t discussed what happened either.

He talks to Frank but he doesn’t _talk._

Buried in his own problems, the man lets him.

It takes too much. It takes far too much for them to finally start talking.

It doesn’t start when Frank bursts in after three days of radio silence, when he's followed by the slinking form of his daemon whose muzzle is red with blood that isn’t her own and her teeth and her eyes are white and wide.

It doesn’t start when Frank calls for them, lying helpless on the floor. When Jackobi has to haul Ceilidh away on his own a second time, with just the scant help Dinah’s mongoose daemon can offer him.

It doesn’t even start after Frank’s mission ends and the wounds finally begin to close. It doesn’t start when they’re outside David's goddamn _house,_ engine running, about to eat like everything’s normal.

David won’t lie. It’s built up in him like a banked fire. Like floods held back by a storm front. He gets out of the car, and then, a month or two later, he gets right back in.

“Jack,” he says, softly, sometime after midnight. The painted wolf is curled up on a blanket across the room, away from David. He stirs immediately and lifts his head.

David tries to form the words, but even here - _especially_ here - in his own house, in this spare bedroom, where everything smells familiar and feels soft and calm and normal, he can’t quite get it out.

Jackobi leaps onto the bed and stands with his paws pressing into David’s chest. “We have to go back,” he says.

David nods, too proud to let himself choke up. He reaches out and Jackobi lies flat so that they can press themselves tightly to one another. Like they used to when they were young.

“Can you find him?”

Jackobi’s ears twitch and he stuffs his wet nose into David’s eye, then exhales. _Of course._

David writes a note for Sarah. A text might wake her. Walking in would be worse. A note is something solid. A reliable apology. He pulls on his coat and tiptoes down the stairs, unlatching the front door with a click. Jackobi slinks outside and looks around, nose high, as David closes it again.

For a while, Jackobi stills: a black shape in the moonlight. Then he turns and begins to pad down the sidewalk.

David might be good with computers, a dab hand at writing code. He might have an excellent grasp on what makes people tick and how to get underneath their skin.

That’s not what helped him find Frank Castle.

His best tracker wasn’t made out of metal or plastic. It was Jackobi.

Painted wolves have territories stretching hundreds of miles and they can _smell_ when that territory changes. Jackobi can remember thousands upon thousands of scents, stored like memories in his head until the moment they're needed. The moment they're required.

David just remembers the day they found Frank’s ripped, discarded shirt in the pouring rain. How they kept it in a resealable plastic bag that was opened only for Jackobi’s nose, until they had Frank’s movements down.

They don’t need that kind of help now. They’ve both spent enough time around Frank and his daemon to have the memory saved.

Still, the city is too big to track Frank solely on foot. They take a late bus across the bridge and into Manhattan, Jackobi’s nostrils flaring at every stop. David, for that matter, keeps a close eye on social media, in case anyone reports a sighting of the Punisher.

Nothing. Nada. Nothing but Jackobi getting silently to his feet and padding out of the bus.

David tugs his coat a little tighter around himself and heads out after him. They don’t need to speak to work together.

Enough people are out past midnight in Manhattan that nobody pays much attention to them. Jackobi stays closer to David’s side to make it look like David’s leading, but otherwise they carry right on.

At a Starbucks, the wolf stops and sniffs around the gutter for a moment. “Coffee,” he says. “He bought it and stood here.”

“How long ago?”

“Very fresh.” Jackobi lowers his nose back to the sidewalk and - David can touch this - _feels_ for the scent, the way it twists and rolls over the ground. “Here. I can track it.”

David sinks his fingers into the thick fur at Jackobi’s withers and scratches him. He waits a moment to be sure of their surroundings, that no car is slowing and no one is paying attention to them, then touches his daemon between his shoulders.

It’s their signal. Jackobi springs forward, nose dipping between the ground and a trail of scent that hovers in the low current just over it, stirred up by the passing cars and the subway vents.

David glances around, then hurries after him.

The track takes them several blocks north, then west. Touching closely with his daemon, David can follow their progress on his phone without looking up and carry on searching for anything nearby Frank might want to visit.

When they cross a street and make a left, David thinks he might know where they’re going.

“Jack-“ he begins, but realises the painted wolf has frozen, tail up and ears taut. David stumbles to a halt, shoving his phone into his pocket.

“Jack~” echoes a sing-song voice from somewhere in front of them. The streetlight on this corner has burned out and the owner of the voice is using the pool of darkness.

A flicker of movement. A pair of eyes reflect back at them.

“ _Why_ have you come here?"

Jackobi licks his lips and whines. David steps up to his side.

“Oh. David.” The shape stalks towards him. “He brought you. You’ve come looking.”

A long tail swishes, almost breaking into the light, before it disappears again.

“What are you hoping to find?”

“Ceilidh,” David says. It’s an acknowledgement, not a warning or an answer.

“Ahh. Well, you have found her.”

“I want to see Frank.”

The cheetah _hmm_ s in a rolling noise that is not quite a purr. There’s a flicker again, and this time David’s eyes follow her to the porch she has leapt onto. The discs of her eyes blink at him. “He’s busy.”

David looks up, past the streetlight, to the window he’s seen before through the lens of a camera. “Seeing Karen, huh.”

He sees something move behind the curtain, almost like a shadow. "Does he do that much, these days?”

Ceilidh doesn’t answer, just sits there and gazes at them impassively.

David looks back at the eerie reflective eyes. “Why don’t you go tell him we’re here?"

She tilts her head back and laughs, a pretty little sound that does nothing to relax the tension radiating off of Jackobi.

When the wolf takes a step forward, she falls silent.

When he lowers his head, David sees the light glint off her four large canines. “I wouldn’t do that, little wolf."

“You won’t keep us from him,” Jackobi answers.

A low growl begins to build, deep in his chest, and Ceilidh hisses—

“Enough.”

David and Jackobi turn as one, only to find themselves face to face with the man they have been seeking and a gun.

David, holding up his hands, almost has to laugh. “This what we are now, Frank? Back to square one?”

Frank, in a baseball cap and a dark leather jacket, looks more like your average mugger than the vulnerable man David knew and the killer the media adored. “What’re you doing here?”

David just shakes his head. He shrugs, dropping his hands. “Just came to see you, I guess. Don’t ask _me._ Jackobi was all for killing the man we spent nine months with figuring out how to avenge our families. Or something."

Frank has the decency to look guilty, or at the very least a bit shifty.

“Or maybe I was wrong and he doesn’t have any friends still. Just enemies. Ain’t that right, Jack?" David raises a hand and begins to walk away. "Nice to see you, Ceilidh!”

Frank lowers the gun and grabs David’s arm. “Wait.” 

From the hair rising on the back of his neck and the growling beside him, David can tell that the cheetah has come down to join them. 

Still, Frank doesn’t hurt him. Instead, he looks conflicted and... resigned. “Come with me,” he says, and lets go, holstering the gun.

David glances at his daemon, who shares the unspoken thought. Then, with a smile thrown at Ceilidh, he follows Frank into the dark.


End file.
